the fi rst QuiltCon that portrayed Nick
Offerman’s character Ron Swanson from
television’s “Parks and Recreation.” “The
Ron Swanson Along” quilt was made by
Monica Solorio-Snow, known for her blog
TheHappyZombie. She explained in an
interview why she created it.
“I wanted to do a ‘quilt-along’ project on
my blog and I really wanted to target an
audience that was into pop culture like
myself, and I hoped to draw in people who
were new to quilting,” says Monica. “I had
never made a pixilated portrait quilt, but I
had seen others I liked, such as Amy ‘Sukie’
Newbold’s pixel quilt of Hello Kitty.” So,
she chose her favorite character from her
favorite TV show, and began blogging about
the process in July 2012, in her “The Ron
Swanson Along.”
Monica showed every step in the process,
provided a free, detailed pattern and fabric
choices, and even created a Flickr page
for others to show off their Ron Swanson
quilts. The quilt and the tutorials went viral,
and the quilt was eventually taken to the
actor himself, who signed the label. Part of
what made the quilt stand out was Monica’s
quirky style, which is to “infuse some
mischief with my piecing.” In this quilt, she
included random-print squares amongst the
mostly gray, black, and white solids, such
as a fussy-cut square of a red bird that is
perched in the actor’s hair.
The Ron Swanson quilt was so popular, it
won fi rst place in the Piecing category in
QuiltCon 2013. And again, even in that
show, it wasn’t the only pixel portrait. The
third-place winner in Piecing that year was
“Don’t Blink” by Caro Sheridan, which
depicted a giant pixilated eye.
Who is Caro and what inspired her? A
Canadian quilter now based in Boston, Caro
is a tech-savvy artist who works with digital
photography, so pixels are vital to her work.
She had begun using a Microsoft ExcelPhoto by Vivika Hansen DeNegre“Mona Lisa” • Rowena Bayliss